Ozturk roasters

This is a discussion on Ozturk roasters within the Coffee Roasters forums, part of the Coffee Industry category; Can anyone tell me about their experiences using an ozturk roaster? Considering a 5 or 15kg. Is there much control over the heat? With my ...

Ozturk roasters

Can anyone tell me about their experiences using an ozturk roaster? Considering a 5 or 15kg. Is there much control over the heat? With my toper cafemino electric it's either heat on or off so not much flexibility!

I've got an Ozturk 10kg roaster that I have gotten good use out of. One big difference from other roasters is that the drum is cast iron, not steel. I've not roasted on steel but understand that the cast iron gives a "softer" more even heat. No hot spots. We get nice long (slow) mellow roasts from it. Seeing all the controls on some of the other roasters that the Ozturk doesn't have (or maybe they do now) I like to compare it to a Chevrolet or Ford. It's got everything you need and it gets you from point A to point B in comfort, just no heated seats, rear view camera, or 37 speaker sound system.

For heat control there is a screw setting on the valve controlling propane flow that you can adjust to increase/decrease gas flow. When we're roasting a small batch we adjust the heat down but we're just 'eyeballing' it. I would like a nicer way to adjust the pressure where I could also get a pressure readout, then it would be much easier to know when I'm roasting 3kg I need to set the machine to X or when I'm roasting 5kg it should be set to XX. I've looked here locally to try and find some plumbing to enhance our heat control but in Ireland it is tough to find things that are around the corner in the U.S. and then they only want to sell it to a certified propane person (they won't even sell you a length of hose here!)

That said I do think you can work with Yavuz Ozturkbay, to gentleman running the show, to fit the machine out with any extra bells and whilstles you may want on the machine.

There is a guy in New York who is an importer and he could give you A-Z the pros and cons versus other machines. Look up Adirondak Coffee Roasters on the web.

As to the reference about them being like an Ambex I heard, but have nothing to corroborate it, that Ozturk made the roaster frames for Ambex and then Ambex finished them up the way they wanted them to be.

Last edited by expat; 12-23-2012 at 10:57 AM.

Wrinkles only go where the smiles have been -- Jimmy Buffett (via Mark Twain)

Hello Bradley,
Ozturk gives you one of the best roasters for the money. They come standard with air-flow control and a gas control at the valve(not convenient for profile roasting). But they do offer a flame control that is simple to use one the fly and only costs a 100.00 additional. Please let me know if you have any more questions, "I am the guy on Ebay"
Dwane

Hi Dwane, thanks for the info. I'd be very keen to opt for the flame control. I've been roasting a lot on a small electric Toper, the heat is either on or off with a noticeable lag which can make it tricky to control at times. I'm looking at a 5kg and will need to also be able to roast 1/3 capacity if needed without too much trouble!

expat, thanks for the info, good to hear from someone who uses one.

So many speciality, micro roasters use Probat roasters and I'm sure it's for a good reason! However, we aren't yet at the stage where we can manage that kind of investment plus we've had good results and some very good feedback roasting on a Toper so I'm hoping we can continue using Turkish roasters.

Bradley, I had a question as to why you are trying to decide between a 5kg and a 15kg? Why not a decision between a 5kg and a 10 kg? Or a 10kg and a 15kg? It seems odd you're looking at roaster A with capacity X and then roaster B with 300% more capacity.

A 5kg is nice if you are just starting because you've got the flexibility to roast a 1 or 2kg batch on up to a 5kg batch and you (possibly) don't have sales volume to justify the larger roaster. You didn't mention your sales or sales potential in your post so I don't know.

And you can't roast really small batches with the 15kg, you probably need to be roasting, I'd think, at least 7kg or so to get a decent roast in a 15kg. I'm sure more expert roasters than I could roast smaller batches but if you don't know what you're doing you could burn up a lot of beans. If you've got a blend you're roasting and one component is say, 15% of the blend then you're going to have a lot left over after you roast even roasting the minimum sized batch for the 15kg roaster.

We started with a 10kg roaster and it was tough at first because we didn't have the sales to support the output. We got around it by roasting our blends all together and what we didn't immediately sell we stored in bins. If we roasted the beans separately we'd have had a lot more beans sitting around, waiting to be blended. If you're strictly a single origin roaster then that isn't as big of a concern. Fourtunately we quickly generated enough sales to justify roasting the beans separately which really is the best way since you can concentrate on bringing out the best of each bean.

Food for thought. Maybe a subject for the forum? One I've never seen addressed.

Finally, I looked at the Topher before buying my Ozturk. To be clear I didn't physically see them sitting side-by-side or use them both before purchasing but doing a side-by-side comparison on paper I found they were a lot alike. But I liked the cast iron drum on the Ozturk, and I forget now but I think the Ozturk was a four motor machine while the Topher was a three motor machine. And in the end the Topher was quite a bit more money.

Well I see Duane chimed in here and as I said earlier he can probably answer all your questions A-Z regarding the machinery.

Wrinkles only go where the smiles have been -- Jimmy Buffett (via Mark Twain)

I wasn't originally considering anything bigger than 5kg but when I contacted Ozturk they told me they've got a 15kg used for sale for 1000 euro less than a new 5kg. It's a good deal but I still think it will be too big for our current needs.

At the moment our sales are split between a market stall at a local market and supply to a few farms shops and coffee shops in our area and the odd one here and there further away. Our small 1kg roaster was a good starter for the market stall as it allows us to roast just 4 bags at a time meaning we don't need to stock pile and can always roast fresh. However, one of the coffee shops we supply orders in the region of 10-20kg per week and that takes ages to roast on our machine. So, to grow we need something bigger but a roaster that will still allows us to do batches down to 2kg. On or two speciality shops have placed orders with us for single origin/cup of excellence coffee's in small quantities down to 2kg to serve as guest coffee's. It's important for us to still be able to offer this.

So, we might go for a 5kg and keep the 1 in case we need it. If it goes ok with the 5 we could sell the 1kg.

I heard back from Ozturk today and they did confirm that it would be 75 euro to add flame control to the 5kg, they are quick and helpful to respond so feeling quite positive!